1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to accessing information spread across multiple ontologies for the purpose of performing reasoning tasks.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Ontologies are rich sources of information that can be exploited for performing reasoning tasks. An example application is the use of biomedical ontologies for reasoning within question answering (QA) systems to assist physicians in making the correct diagnosis and prescribing the right medication. Such a QA system needs to have sufficient access to information regarding anatomy, pathology, pharmacology, and other related domains. While there are ontologies that cater to each of these individual domains, there is no ontology that sufficiently covers all these domains. Moreover, the ontologies for the individual domains do not necessarily contain all the information required by QA systems to effectively assist physicians. Therefore, such systems need to both enhance and integrate several biomedical ontologies.